Swedavia secures airport operations with Citrix XenMobile

With responsibility for 10 airports and 40 million passengers each year, Swedavia must find the right balance of business agility and security.

To do so, the Swedish company needs immediate access to accurate, shared information that helps the company reduce emissions, lower fuel consumption from faster turnarounds, increase punctuality, and improve customer satisfaction.

To aid productivity, employees use company-issued smartphones while on the move. But the company was concerned about security and the increasing risk of cyber-crime.

“We were using the phones’ native apps for email, calendars, and so on, but that wasn’t secure,” Head of IT Infrastructure Claes Johansson explains. “We have about 1,500 cellphones, and people are sending emails with confidential documents attached. When you do that on a laptop, they are secured by a bunch of rules and tools, but on the phone, it was just an open book.”

Swedavia also wanted to improve access to information through the creation of in-house apps, and Johansson says, “We needed a platform to secure everything.”

So the firm selected Citrix XenMobile to provide its enterprise mobility management.

“Now, we can manage each phone in so many ways”

Before XenMobile, the company didn’t have any management or visibility over the mobile phones.

“All we could do was wipe the user’s email account in Outlook,” Johansson explains. “Now, we can manage each phone in so many ways. We can wipe the whole phone or just certain apps. We can block apps from being installed, and we can ensure phones always have the latest OS. We are really happy with security; XenMobile gives us more information and more control.”

Better functionality and improved security

“XenMobile is an important part of our digital workplace strategy,” Johansson says. “Now, you don’t need to be stuck in the office or have access to Wi-Fi to read your email or have access to your calendar. Everything is secure and accessible, so you can be more mobile. We have better functionality, too, with integrated contacts and calendar functions like Out of Office.”

In addition to Citrix enterprise-grade mobile productivity apps, staff can in the future access business applications on the XenMobile Store and accessed securely through Citrix Secure Hub.

Faster development of in-house apps

Swedavia is developing a series of apps in-house that will draw on information from different sources to help staff be more productive. One app, for example, provides airport gate staff and ground crew with all the information they need to service a plane quickly, including parking slot, refueling, and cleaning information.

Deploying these apps on the XenMobile platform speeds development and enhances security, Johansson says.

“With XenMobile, we provide apps through our own app store, rather than publishing them on the Apple or Android stores, so they stay in a secure environment,” he says. “That lets us develop apps more quickly because our developers can focus on building the app itself, knowing that security is taken care of.

“Citrix helped us get a stable and secure mobile platform. As we develop more of our own apps, users will enjoy even greater functionality.”

XenMobile is an important part of our digital workplace strategy. Now, you don’t need to be stuck in the office or have access to Wi-Fi to read your email or have access to your calendar. Everything is secure and accessible, so you can be more mobile.

Claes Johansson

Head of IT Infrastructure

Swedavia

About Citrix
Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) is leading the transition to software-defining the workplace, uniting virtualization, mobility management, networking and SaaS solutions to enable new ways for businesses and people to work better. Citrix solutions power business mobility through secure, mobile workspaces that provide people with instant access to apps, desktops, data and communications on any device, over any network and cloud. With annual revenue in 2014 of $3.14 billion, Citrix solutions are in use at more than 330,000 organizations and by over 100 million users globally. Learn more at www.citrix.com.